Tim Child

Its funny, my posts about moving to Norway are far more popular and getting many more visitors than any post about moving to Sweden. Could it be because Norway is quite a difficult place to enter compared to Sweden?

So I was wondering what days are public holidays in Norway, and it seems that most of them are up front in the year, the biggest being the national constitution day on the 17th of May.  This is for 2006:

New Years Day
01 January

Palm Sunday
9 April

Maundy Thursday
13 April

Good Friday
14 April

Easter Sunday
16 April

Easter Monday
17 April

Public holiday
01 May

Constitution Day
17 May

Ascension Day
25 May

Whit Sunday
4 June

Whit Monday
5 June

Constitution Day
17 May

Christmas Day
25 December

Boxing Day
26 December

Which is a shame because I would have loved them to be a bit more spread out, but we are lucky to have them anyway.

I was thinking about redoing this in Django on it or something, but then I thought; what is the point of redoing this?  Although it only took me 4 hours to build in the first place, there is not really much point in rebuilding something that works.

So Norsk Test is back and still a multiple choice test that I was using to test myself on Norwegian words, either from Norwegian to English or English to Norwegian.  All the words have been taken from the book “Klar for Norge” and as I mentioned above it was done rather quickly, but I need the practice.  I am sure there are some errors in it, even though a Norwegian teacher has looked over it and my Norwegian girlfriend.
On the ToDo list is an admin interface for it so I can easily add words, more classification types, I freeform type test, word search and tidying up the oh so horrid interface!  Perhaps look at the SQL it is using because I am sure its quite nasty.

Now I need to find something to get those Django skills up!

Great, as we have seen with some interesting US based mapping technologies recently opening up state-collected geographical data is in everyones interest. After all we paid for it to be done in the first place and so it should be available to all.

Sign this petition:

Petition – Public Geo Data:

Hi all, I am back from Skiing in Norway now, so I have a bit more access to the internet than I did before. I am not sure of the phone charges when using my mobile to connect to the internet so I only used it to check my bank account and pay a couple of bills.

The Mac and the phone work flawlessly together though so no complaints there, and the holiday was great – some really nice weather and some good skiing. Expect to see some photos shortly.

Now I need to get back into checking my RSS feeds as I only have another 1433 posts before I have looked at everything ;-)

To follow on from my page and other posts about moving to Norway, I thought that I would just mention that I got some new home insurance the other day from DnB Nor, the largest Bank in Norway, as they have a deal which is cheap when you have internet banking with them.

As they are one of the easiest banks to setup with when you are a non-norwegian this is probably quite relevant information.

However there can be even cheaper deals to be had if you are a member of a union of some description.

All in all, Insurance here seems to be cheaper than that in London and that can only be a good thing!

I went skiing after work on Friday night, took about an hour to get the slopes from Bergen and although the slope was dark it was extremely well lit. In fact it was in some ways better than in the day – very clear to see what lay ahead.

I think its great that one can get down to the slopes and ski where as I used to go down the pub and have a few too many drinks!

Today I went down and took my employment contract into the Police Station. Apparently this will make the application for staying in Norway that much smoother that I had to mention it here.

Still not sure how long it is going to take before I get my number and confirmation but at least I know that they are looking at my application!

This doesn’t seem to be common knowledge yet, but the Norwegian government in their quest for new rules and laws (not to mention new taxes!) has implemented a rule that everyone that comes to Norway after the 1st September 2005 will have to complete 300 hours of tuition if they want to stay permanently.

Slight bit of information on the UDI site as well as more in Norwegian on the ImDi

Norwegian is of course the first language of Norway, confused somewhat by the two written forms and hundreds of regional dialects, but none the less it is important if you want to live a life in Norway to understand it.

At my language school, my teacher also told of a new rule that requires all none-natives staying in Norway will need to undergo 50 hours of lessons in their native tongue about Norwegian laws and practises but I have yet to see any information written about this yet.

Velkommen til Norge indeed!

More about moving to Norway.

Today I accepted an offer for a position at vizrt, which I am very excited about. The company is a fast growing dynamic company with extremely interesting products in the broadcast graphics arena. Their client list is second to none including TV2, BBC, ITN, Fox, CNN, and the product set seems excellent.

I am looking forward to starting on Monday.